Chapter 58: Dance
Shadows danced in the dim torch light of a huge cavern. The cavern was quite separated from the slave quarters, and the reason for that was because Balon personally bulldozed a tunnel a few hundred feet away from all of them.
Once he found himself and the girl distanced from everyone, the large beefy youth then proceeded to smash the surrounding stone to bits until it became a wide spacious room with a tall jagged ceiling.
Apart from the ceiling, the floor was not flat and very rough too. In fact, most of the ground was covered by debris of craggy rocks that made it terrible for individuals to walk on them…and even worse if they fell on them.
Upon the floor that was similar to the ruins of an earthquake, were tall wooden poles embedded into the ground. The distance from the height of the pole to the jagged stones of pain was at least fifteen feet, and upon the sea of wooden poles was a little girl dancing and fluttering from thin pillar to pillar.
The tall poles were numerous yet distanced from each other, and they acted as the only places she could set her feet on. Obviously the safest thing to do would be to simply stay still on a single pole, but instead the girl madly dashed through the sea of pillars.
Her movements were ferocious and driving like a furious tsunami yet, there was a beauty and graceful stride to her untamed actions. It combined violent martial strikes with the proud and elegant sways and spins of a dancer.
As the girl danced further and for longer, the soft and gentle look on her face transformed to imitate the lofty pride and conceit hidden within the dance. No longer was she the sweet, kindhearted, and humble slave girl, but a proud daughter of heaven, descended from the very skies to sunder the earth and land.
A clear gleam of light shot across her eyes as they changed from timidness and uncertainty, to assertiveness, dignity, and conviction. The blazing conviction, to either lead the masses, or to dominate and enslave them all.
Deep within, the girl was not sure where her intentions lay. In fact, her intentions were unlike Balon’s nor Zan’s, who sought strength to be above others. And nor were her intentions of a noble paragon of light, who sought to be guardian, protector and shepherd of all beings. The girl sought strength simply to not be bullied, and while commendable, the dance of the divine and demonic dragon god seeked greater intention, a greater focus and will from her. So in the end despite her talent, the girl’s focus was brought to a screeching halt. A young dragon fell from the skies and was met with the jagged rocks of the earth.
Yela fell straight towards the rocks and Balon, with his face resting on his fist, watched emotionlessly as it happened once again.
THUD!
A fall from fifteen feet to jagged stone rocks might not have scratched the children of the Brightfire King, but to the fragile body of a twelve year old bloodlineless girl, an unlucky plummet could lead to broken bones and death.
Though, perhaps the fates shined on Yela, or they wanted to prolong her torture…but in the end through every fall, her body was “lucky” enough to descend in ways that didn’t snap her neck or bash her delicate head in.
“Ugh…”
Yela painfully groaned. While the plummet didn’t break any bones it did not mean that the fall did not put her through pain and injury. This time she fell on her side, and a gash was left on her dainty left shoulder. The blood proceeded to slither onto her chest and further down her arm. As the red flowed, it accentuated the numerous blows, cuts, and gashes that riddled her body.
Indeed, there were a myriad of injuries on her from the repeated, consecutive falls of her training. Fate was indeed by her side, as it was already a miracle that she didn’t break any bones from the now seventy-eighth time that she plummeted onto the jagged rocks. There were gashes of flesh and blood on her knees, arms, feet, back, etc. Yet, her teacher would not let her rest until her body collapsed from exhaustion once again.
“GET! UP!”
The roaring lungs of a dragon blasted at her, echoing through the chambers of the stone cavern. Respondingly, the little girl pushed herself off from the bloodstained rocks, her skinny arms trembling as she drove the force downwards to lift her body off from them. Once more, she arduously climbed the wooden pole and repeated the painful process.
…THUD!
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The girl fell again, this time her shoulder blade suffered a bruise. Thankfully the rock was not sharp, for at the angle she fell upon it she would have had four inches of steel embedded through her back.
“Up! Do you not remember what I told you!?”
“The—pain I go–”
The girl heaved as she climbed up on the wooden poles once again.
“Th– The pain— now! Will serve me— later in the future!”
“The more pain that I go through now! The less— pain I will go through onwards!”
“Good! Now, again!”
Yela focused, and her unsteady eyes turned clear once more. The girl’s trembling and heaving body started to, somehow on will, stabilize instantaneously.
As she performed the motions of the profound dance, she found her sensations of pain and misery drifting away from her. Whenever she danced she felt a deep calling. A deep calling within the divine trance of the dance that she gave herself to completely and totally. The calling started after the third motion in the dance, and it would keep getting stronger through every third, sixth, and ninth motion. Leaning in towards this special dream-like feeling, by the thirty-third motion the pain went away, and by the sixty-sixth she would enter a trance.
Balon observed her keenly. For some odd reason the girl always failed on the seventy-sixth step. It perplexed him how someone with the ability to learn the beginning of the dance through sheer demonstration, and correct herself repeatedly from each mistake made, could fail on the same step over and over again.
Actually, Balon did not even know his student was going into a trance everytime she performed the dance. He thought she was simply talented, and was connecting to the concepts of pride and power within the dance, as displayed by the expressions she made.
While he was not wrong, what he saw was like the crescent moon, and a large part of the true reality of the situation was hidden from him in plain sight. Never did he experience nor hear of someone who could forget all sensation of pain once they reached the thirty-third motion, and definitely never of someone who would enter a dream-like state on the sixty-sixth.
Actually, as Balon knew it there was no meaning to the number of motions in the dance. There were nine hundred, ninety-nine motions in total and it didn’t matter whether you stopped on the twenty-second or fifty-fifth or the three hundred thirty-third. While it mattered how long you went, it did not matter at what special number you stopped.
The dance aimed at a single objective, which was the upgrade of the physical vehicle, the strengthening of the five senses and various physical attributes. It enhanced coordination, strength, endurance, perception, agility, and martial arts skill and affinity. This was already of course very impressive. A single dance that could augment all of these qualities was already rare, but to do so with the extent that it did was beyond this world.
Of course there was another side to the dragon dance but to Balon, the connection to the source of draconic energy was simply an added bonus of the dance. Balon had performed all nine hundred and ninety-nine motions and while it brought him immense strength in the physical world, it only brought him a minor enlightenment in terms of knowledge and familiarity with the draconic source.
So why? Why was it that his seemingly talented student kept failing on the same step over and over? Was this the limit of her talent? No…it shouldn’t be. With what she’s shown, she should be struggling somewhere near the three to four hundredth motions, not the double digit ones. The connection to the draconic source should only pose a problem by the eight hundredth motion.
At first, Balon did not expect much from a slave rat from a random, bloodlineliness base kingdom. The youth was planning to train her physically to the point where she could valiantly, but just barely, fight her way out of this place. The rest of her life’s journey and rise to strength was up to her. That extent was what he awarded of her will and valor to struggle against her circumstances. Nothing more and nothing less.
Yet all those notions changed when Balon finished setting the first hundred beams of wooden poles on the ground. The large youth simply wanted to stretch his limbs and never in his mind did he ever think of even teaching her a single motion of the royal dance. Dismissively, he turned away from the little girl that was watching him. The average talent in their territory took days to understand the first steps of the extremely precise and demanding dance, there was no way that this little slave girl could replicate it with a sheer glance.
Maybe that red haired fellow could…but what were the odds that such talents were fated to be in this place at this very time?
Once he turned his head back towards the little girl however, he saw as the girl mindlessly performed the same steps and the same motions, to the eleventh degree. First, his jaw dropped, then, a rush of blood hit him when he realized the talent that he had just uncovered.
‘Truly there is gold to be found in places you don’t expect!’
With the talent that she had, perhaps she could reach further, possibly even into the ranks of the elite among bloodline society. Perhaps he could not take her under his wing, but Balon was excited nonetheless. He simply wanted to see how far she could take herself if she struggled with all her might. So with that in mind, the youth proceeded to demonstrate the royal dance(which was supposed to be kept within the family) to Yela, in hopes that he could surprise him further.
And that she did, for every time she failed, she did not even need guidance to correct herself on the next try. Balon was simply a patient and entertained observer on the side, and barely a teacher. That was until…she reached the seventy-seventh motion.
‘Why? Why do you keep failing on this step!?’
Over and over he guided her of the minute, precise physical contractions and extensions of the body to perform the motion. This stumped Balon, for there was no large gap in skill between the seventy-sixth and seventy-seventh motion. By all accounts she had the talent to perform this step, so why was she stuck here!?
Balon first wondered if it had to do with the anatomy of the base body compared to his draconic body, but he immediately denied that thought.
‘I once saw a boy from a different mother with blood so low he could have been a normal human, but with months of training that inept fool got to this step too.’
Shaking his head, his piercing, glowing, golden draconic eyes stared at her once again. It got to the point where he subconsciously activated his bloodline. Thirty-third, thirty-fourth…
Balon counted each step and nothing was different.
‘Wait. What!?’
It was only with his eyes activated that he could observe it. On the forty-fourth step, the fifty-fifth step and sixty-sixth step there was a flash of supernatural light inside her eyes. This was not the light of bloodline, but a mysterious light and force that gleamed in her eyes like fiery starlight.
‘Seventy-first, seventy-second…’
Balon counted each motion as she performed them in real time. The beauty and grace of her motions were unmatched even compared to his sisters and quickly it reached to the seventy-fifth step. Here and now he was about to observe and possibly correct and advance his student towards the next step. Yet, before he could do so, he was alerted by a sound in the tunnels.
“Balon! You’re here aren’t you?”
THUD!
The girl fell from the skies once again.